Free Public Burning by Robert Coover

Austrian policeman intervenes and a four-man (French, English, American, Russian) Allied Military Patrol speeds to the scene. They block the kidnappers’ escape route, leap out of the car with weapons at the ready. But the Soviet member of the FEAR Patrol commandeers the patrol car, shoves Lukas and his kidnappers in, leaps into the driver’s seat himself, slams into reverse, rams two civilian cars, shifts back into first—for God’s sake!
    STAND BY TO CRASH!
    â€”Where Is Uncle Sam?

3 .
    Idle Banter: The Fighting Quaker Among Saints and Sinners
    My old California colleague Bill Knowland was in trouble in his first test as the new Republican floor leader in the Senate, so on the way back to my office Thursday from the emergency meeting of the National Security Council at the White House, I stopped by the Capitol to see if I could be of help. The Hill and Mall were swarming with demonstrators, counterdemonstrators, tourists, cops, dogs, kids, and there were expressions of worry, gloom, apprehension, uncertainty everywhere. There’d been too many setbacks. In the middle of all this, Knowland had decided to pull a fast one: after having told the Minority Leader Lyndon Johnson earlier that there’d be nothing more controversial today than the call of the calendar—which few Senators even bother to show up for—he’d suddenly decided to interrupt the call with an aggressive attempt to ram our new controls bill through and catch the Democrats flatfooted. I wasn’t sure Bill was doing the smart thing, but I understood his motives and had to admire them: he’d just taken over from the ailing Bob Taft, and he was trying hard to put his personal stamp on the leadership job, make it his through partisan conflict. It wasn’t easy to follow a living legend like Taft, Bill had to do something audacious to signal the change and establish his authority. Of course, he could blow it, too, and the chances were just about fifty-fifty—with Wayne Morse now voting with the Democrats, there were forty-eight votes on each side of the aisle, and my vote was the tie-breaker. I was eager to get back to the Rosenberg case, things were in a mess now, thanks to Douglas, and I didn’t know what the hell was going on or what I was supposed to do, but Eisenhower’s relationship with Congressional Republicans was so fragile, we couldn’t afford to antagonize them in any way—I had no choice but to be on hand and save the day for Knowland if need be. Besides, it was just the kind of political battle I loved: nobody gave a shit about the bill itself, it was a straight-out power struggle, raw and pure, like a move in chess.
    On the way in, I saw Bob Taft. The poor bastard, he looked like hell. Mr. Republican. Fighting Bob. The Go-It-Alone Man. He was going it alone now, all right: he was dying, hip cancer apparently, probably wouldn’t last the year out. On the side of the angels now. There were some reporters hovering around him, looking very sympathetic, and since sympathy from those sonsabitches was something I rarely enjoyed, I decided Fighting Bob could share a little of it with me, he wasn’t going to need it much longer anyway. “Say, Bob,” I called out, moving in, “I have news for you!” Taft knew where I’d been that morning, knew about the Korean and German and Rosenberg crises—the whole Capitol was obviously ass-deep in the usual rumors, prophecies, and panic—and so of course he was all ears. He was on crutches and appeared to have lost a lot of weight (which was maybe why he seemed to be “all ears”), but he stretched forward eagerly as though reaching for a cure. The newsguys all turned to me, grabbing for the pencils tucked behind their ears, and photographers snatched up their cameras—I quickly lifted my chin and raised my eyebrows, conscious that my stern Quaker eyes and heavy cheeks often gave me an unfortunate scowly